Yahoo discloses number of US govt data requests

Associated PressTuesday, June 18, 2013

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Yahoo is the latest company to disclose how many requests for user data it has received from U.S. government agencies, putting the number between 12,000 and 13,000 in the six months that ended on May 31.

Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer and General Counsel Ron Bell said in a blog post late Monday that the most common requests concerned fraud homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations.

Yahoo said it plans to update the report twice a year. Later this summer, the company plans to issue a global law enforcement transparency report that covers the first half of this year.

Internet companies have asked the U.S. government to be able to share how many requests it received related to national security and how it handled them. Those requests were made as part of Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies.

"As always, we will continually evaluate whether further actions can be taken to protect the privacy of our users and our ability to defend it," the blog post said.

A representative for Yahoo did not immediately return a message asking for more details. The blog post did not say how many Yahoo users were affected or what percentage of the requests the company complied with.

Yahoo's disclosure comes after companies such as Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. gave details about the government requests.